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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5364975" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994part 3/6Team Spirit: A third bit of character-building advice this month once again takes a different angle. Don't know why they didn't make it this issue's formal special topic. As should be obvious from the title, this is about giving your party enough common ground that they want to adventure together. Now, you can work this out amongst you, or if you want to make the campaign truly random and quick, you can roll on a table. Actually, this devotes more time to the random tables than the custom advice, which I find rather amusing. Some of them could be used in conjunction with others, and of course, the table on group customs could be rolled as many times as you want, and you think they can remember. This is another thing that could break an impasse and speed along the process of starting up a campaign by a few hours.  Definitely one for noting down. Behind the scenes: Bah, back to the promotional articles with a planescape one. Unlike the teasers, this is fairly banal, although it does have some cool sketches I don't remember seeing in the actual books. While Diterlizzi gets all the fame, Dana Knutson also had a good deal to do with defining planescape's distinctive aesthetic, and indeed, getting it commissioned in the first place. And of course, there are plenty of other people who deserve credit for making the line as good as it is. So this is a bit of mwah, mwah, we're all fabulous dahlings, let's engage in a bit of backslapping and drink champagne to celebrate our baby being released into the world. It's a little bit sickly, but oh well. At least in this case they deserve it. Still, again I say next! This is inconsequential! Campaign Journal: Carl Sargent makes his final contribution to Greyhawk's post war geography. Last time we went sailing the sea, now it's into the depths of the Adri forrest. Even elves & stubby gnomes are rare in the depths of this one, while bandits, goblinoids and weird stuff aplenty for the players to fight roam the area. So it's mostly low-mid level encounters, but there's also one super high level plot device bit that's near impossible to get into, and has a terrifying evil artifact sealed within. With plenty of important characters from the area given full stats, this is another fairly long and wide-reaching article that you'll have to build upon to make a complete campaign, but does give you enough for when players stroll through the area. It's not as obviously suffering post-war as other areas, but it is a place riven by paranoia, with lots of small groups who don't trust each other or any strangers wandering through. And with adventurers being the sort to fight first and ask questions later, they shouldn't be short of opportunities for XP. So I think once again this'll make for fairly good gaming. Should I be playing greyhawk, I'd use this. Eye of the monitor: Ah yes, computers vs consoles. one war that was particularly immature, because the majority of people eventually wound up owning at least one of each. Can we not accept that each has plusses and negatives for different kinds of games? Fie on ye, and your tribalism! A pox on both your houses! I'll be over here having fun with both. Secret of Mana is another megaseller of the SNES era, even if it doesn't quite beat Zelda 3 overall. Sandy still gives it a 5 star rating; with it's multiple characters, decent AI, sense of humour and challenging puzzles. Consoles can produce games that have depth and don't let anyone say otherwise. Ultima: the false Prophet brings this series to the Super Nintendo. It doesn't get a brilliant grade, and actually, it barely gets reviewed at all, with Sandy digressing into a rant on the drawbacks of console versions of PC games, and indeed conversions in general. This is actually probably more interesting than a normal review would be. He does seem surprisingly keen on turning this column into a general soapbox. Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse is one of the final SSI AD&D games. It does have the usual flaw of requiring grinding for XP, but is otherwise is plenty of fun, and has a lot more instant action than the old games. Nice to see them producing stuff for the smaller campaign settings as well. Ultima VIII: Pagan sees this series continue to decline in quality. It doesn't give you enough help figuring out how to play it, and the controls grow increasingly arcade game like. Fashion is moving on, and they're moving in the wrong way to follow it successfully. God of Thunder has you playing Thor, of course, smashing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> and solving puzzles  in an overhead zeldaesque style. It's a bit primitive, but it's free, so what's the worry. The worst you can get is some wasted time. Raptor is a shoot'em up where you get to upgrade your plane between missions with the money you earned from blowing up enemies. Sandy enjoys that, finding getting real rewards for your accomplishments instead of just a higher score increases the pleasure. Once again, it's free as well. And blowing stuff up is inherently fun in itself.</blockquote>

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